Day 2000

18th August, 2015

3 miles in 47 mins
32C / 89 F, Hot and Dusty

The beat up shoes I've been running in for the past 4 years

Took two days off, mostly intentionally. I've had previous running attempts where I start off super enthusiastically running every day or every other day, only to stop completely in two weeks. Even slower pace than last time, but it was truly incredibly hot. It may as well have been raining, because I was completely drenched in sweat by the time I made it home.

Amazon has been getting a lot of flak in the media recently for its workplace culture. This Vox piece probably best captures my mixed feelings on the matter. I sure as hell wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now if it weren't for my Amazon experiences. That's not what this post is about though.

One of the concepts that Jeff Bezos talks about is this one called 'Day One'. The basic idea is that you should be as enthusiastic/determined every day of working at Amazon, as you would be on your first day at work. That's a fine idea, and maybe a good principle to live by. Certainly sounds like a great way to motivate yourself on every run. But I personally can't really get behind it.

I much prefer the idea of 'Day 2000'. My reasoning goes something like this:

Motivating yourself to do something is far easier when you enjoy it (like video games), and/or you're good at it (e.g. coding). I subscribe to the ten thousand hours philosophy in the pursuit of excellence1. I like to think of the hours that I put in to honing that skill as literal distance that sets me apart from the other version of myself that is still chilling on the couch. The hours of experience are comforting, and give me confidence.

Why 2000 specifically you ask? On average, I can sustainably work in the Zone on something for about 5 hours a day2. 10,000 divided by 5 is 2,000. So yeah. Day 2000.

You wake up, and you pretend like this is the 2,000th day that you're going for a run. You have over 9000 hours of experience. You've done this like a million times before.